Middle School Football

Yet another benefit of living in Oak Ridge: Middle School football! In Oak Ridge, our two middle schools are four-year schools for grades 5-8 (ages 10-13). Both middle schools (Jefferson and Robertsville) feed into Oak Ridge High School, and both boast student bodies of about 600.

They also have organized football teams. The photo above is from this month's City Championship, in which my daughter's school (the Robertsville Rams, in red) thoroughly trounced Jefferson. In fact, Jefferson's net offensive production for the final three quarters of the game was minus-six yards. Final score: Robertsville 38, Jefferson 6.

Add to this an outstanding music program (starting with 4th grade strings), a phenomenal science curriculum (including not just one, but two Advanced Placement physics classes -- along with 17 other AP classes offered -- at ORHS) and national recognition for sustained excellence in education, and you'd be hard pressed to find a better public school system anywhere else.

On the topic of education reform, Überblogger ZenPundit has begun a two-part blog entry on "building an innovation-intersectional idea society" (Part I of II is linked here). I'm doubly pleased that my review of John Kao's latest book Innovation Nation helped catalyze such an outpouring of creative synthesis of a variety of ideas from the ZenPundit.